Writing can be a tough task with Outlines, understanding Story Structures, World Building, Creating Realistic Dialogues, and staring at a blank page as the blinking cursor mocks you for your lack of words. Despite the challenges, there is this satisfying feeling to writing "The End" or "To Be Continued...", at the end of your draft, despite knowing that it's just half the battle. The victorious feeling of seeing an early version of your story materialized by words and hard work. I recently discovered this feeling as I finished my first draft for the book that I am currently writing.
Hello I'm Jacob and I am writing a book, one that will kick start a Super Hero Novel Universe (More Details about my story coming soon). So with that out of the way, let's discuss the
5 things I Learned Writing My First Draft
One: Sometimes Outlining Can Do More Harm Than Good
Outlines are a great way to organize your ideas for your story, letting you map out your scenes and understanding your cast of characters, however I learned that there is a such thing as Too Much Outlining. I wanted to be prepared on writing my first official draft, so I spent countless amount of time outlining, but when it came to actually writing the draft. I realized that I have limited my creativity by forcing myself to shoehorn scenes that no longer fit the story I was writing. I felt restricted by rules that I made up, which started to harm my story.
So I scrapped the majority of my draft and outline and started over, giving myself the creative freedom I need to write something that I can actually be proud of which in the end is more important than following these strict outlines.
Outlines are great, but should be used to give yourself a general idea, I learned to not use them as rules set in stone.
Two: Discover Your Writing Medium
Writing can be fun, but we all have our preferred method on how we write. Some writers write better by typing on a keyboard with a software saving what they write; While other writers may enjoy handwriting their story on a notebook. Then there are writers that do not care and are good with either or.
I learned that I work best by handwriting my story on a notebook, I seem to connect more with what I am writing by doing so compared to typing my story up. Sometimes I struggle to understand what I wrote looking back, and my draft is full of grammar mistakes, but I seem to be happier writing analog.
...But that's just me, like I said we all have our preferred method
Three: It's Okay To Tear That Page
After giving myself creative freedom, my writing got better, but at some point it felt like everything that I wrote started to degrade the more I worked on my story. I looked back at what I was writing, despite hearing many writing advice not to edit your first your first draft, I needed to see what happened. My first few chapters seem to be good, but I can see that a lot of my problems were rooted into a single page. Even though it hurt, I had to rip not only that page, but everything else that came after it (About 10 Pages). By doing this I was able to get back on track and keep a more consistent flow to my story structure. After all I think it's better to remove a few bad pages rather than keeping it and having a bad chapter/story arc.
Four: Writing Schedule
I've heard advice about "Writing Every Single Day" or "Set A Time For You to Write" which sounds good, but unfortunately I learned the hard way that this doesn't work for me. I am not trying to discredit this advice at all, if this works for you then congrats, but for some reason I struggled with this. For the book that I am writing, I did not have a consistent writing schedule at all. Some days I wrote just a single sentence then didn't write again until a few weeks later where suddenly I was writing a whole chapter. Creativity isn't scheduled, it just pops out of nowhere and I just accept it, if I try to schedule or force myself to be creative then I lose the quality of what I am trying to write.
Five: Your First Draft Will Always Be Bad And That's Okay
Your first draft is suppose to be messy, the story is allowed to have plot holes and odd dialogue because it is your first go at the story. It only becomes a problem if those issues stay on the final, but till then it's okay to have those mistakes. It's not like you are publishing your first draft. These are concepts that I understood, but seemed hard to actually implement at first. It wasn't until I let go of my need of writing a story that I considered "Perfect" and instead just focused on writing a story that I genuinely had fun writing. Yes my first draft is messy with plot holes and grammar mistakes, but it isn't the final version there is always room for the editing phase.
Thank You For Reading
Super Hero stories have always been so cool to me, and I am excited to see where this series will go. Book One is currently in the editing phase, I will be sharing more news and updates as I continue.
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